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Confidential recommendations by a special M.I.T. Faculty committee will be reviewed by the Institute's Corporation on Monday to determine the future status of Professor Dirk J. Struik.
The embattled Mathematics professor returned to his teaching duties last week after a five-year suspension during which he was under indictment for Communist conspiracy. The conspiracy charge, brought in the Massachusetts courts, was dropped last spring after a U.S. Supreme Court decision reserved jurisdiction in subversive cases for the federal government.
The Faculty committee, formed this summer when the specific cause for Struik's suspension--the criminal indictment--was removed, will present its report to the Corporation's executive committee Sunday evening. The Faculty findings are understood to include recommendations concerning a permanent reinstatement for Struik.
On Monday, the nine-man executive committee will refer the Faculty report to the full Corporation, a governing board of approximately 40 members that act as trustees of the institute. The executive committee is expected to append its own recommendations to the Faculty report.
Struik was suspended from his post with full pay in 1951, when he was indicted for violating state conspiracy statutes through membership in the Communist Party. In testimony before a congressional committee, F.B.I. undercover agent Herbert Philbrick had named Struik as a member of a Party cell.
For more than five years a series of legal hurdles, including the extradition of prosecution witnesses, blocked a judicial hearing for Struik. Faced with the thorny problem of deciding publicly whether or not it would allow an alleged Communist to teach on its Faculty, M.I.T. resolved the issue by suspending Struik until the settlement of his criminal indictment.
Since no subsequent court hearing on Struik's alleged Communist activities has been held, the Institute was faced in May with either re-hiring Struik or suspending him on new grounds.
A further suspension was called for earlier this week by Thomas Dorgan, clerk of the Suffolk Superior Court and one of Striuk's principal accusers. Dorgan said in a telegram to M.I.T. President James R. Killian that he was "amazed" at the reinstatement of the calculus professor and asked that the Institute Corporation hear direct testimony from Philbrick during its Monday deliberations
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